Books: Secret Believers

“Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ”
By Brother Andrew and Al Janssen, Revell, 2007.

“Secret Believers” may be the most haunting book you will read all year. It will haunt you when you watch or read news from the Middle East. It will haunt you when you read Scripture passages about persecution. It will certainly haunt your prayers.

Brother Andrew, author of “God’s Smuggler,” no longer slips Bibles behind the Iron Curtain. From his home base in the Netherlands, he reaches out to Christians in Islamic countries, strengthening the churches and witnessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Muslims in those countries.

But this book isn’t really Brother Andrew’s story. Three quarters of the book is taken up by the stories of real men and women in Islamic countries, Christians and Muslim converts to Christianity. Their names and the locations have been changed to protect their safety, but the stories are true. They are so compelling, you will find yourself moved to tears and to prayer. You will find it difficult to stop reading.

For Muslim converts to Christianity like Ahmed, Salima, Mustafa and Hassan, their decision to follow Jesus is extremely costly. At the very least, they are cut off from their families and everything they knew about their former lives. They are watched by the secret police. If arrested, they face torture and beatings. They face abduction, forced conversion to Islam and even death.

At the end of the book, Brother Andrew issues four challenges to Christians in the West. He calls for us to see Muslims as people for whom Jesus died, rather than as enemies. He challenges us to forgive rather than seek revenge. Not for nothing does he call these challenges, because they certainly aren’t easy for many of us in the American church, but they give us much to think about and pray for God to give us changed hearts for a changed world.

If you want to know more, there is a Web site, SecretBelievers.org. There you will find links to news headlines, more stories of secret believers in Islamic countries, ways to give and help.

Disclosure: I was provided a copy of this book for review purposes.

Comments

[Jane]

There always has been a world of difference between individuals as enemies and their governments as individual enemies. We cannot lose sight of individual hearts.